Window-shopping for war at expo

Konrad Marshall

BEFORE the daredevils and pyrotechnicians and wing walkers defy death for the masses this weekend at the Australian International Airshow, visitors to Avalon will be treated to a somewhat more sobering display of technological prowess.

The Aerospace & Defence Exposition opened on Tuesday and offered visitors a glimpse of the latest tools for defence - everything from night-vision goggles to high powered drones, air traffic control consoles and satellite systems.

The crowd on day one was a mix of army greens, airforce blues and navy whites, altogether vastly outnumbered by the sea of crisp suits.

The expo is a trade fair like no other - almost a chance to window-shop for war. Most of the interaction on the event floor is government-to-government, including the local Defence Materiel Organisation, which buys ships, planes and tanks for the Australian military.

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Pride of place in the expo area was the booth of Micro Systems, which was spruiking an array of brilliant orange advanced target drones. These drones - unlike those one might use to snap a photo of Kate Middleton - can fly up to 52,000 feet at Mach 9, and are built specifically to be shot down in training exercises.

''They can perform very aggressive manoeuvres - slices, barrel rolls, pitch backs … They're designed to look, taste, feel and smell like the enemy,'' said spokesman Jeff Herro. They're not cheap, generally sold for between $200,000 and $900,000 each, but Herro points out that is still less than the ''million dollar bullets'' used to shoot them down. ''Find the missile guys and ask them what they cost.''

The expo does, of course, promote technologies that save lives alongside those that take them. Saab Technologies Australia has a stand for sharing the virtues of the Giraffe AMB Radar with C-RAM (Counter Rocket Artillery Mortar) detection capability. In recent years three of these were sold to the Australian military at a combined cost of $170 million, and two of them are being used by defence forces in Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan.